The Xantriss Retribution
The Xantriss Retribution was a retribution campaign carried out by the Drowned against the forces of the rebel Imperial Army commander "Colonel Kiaguz" and the natives of Xantriss who supported him. Background By the twilight years of the Great Crusade, the Drowned had built a nigh-on insurmountable wall of secrecy around their Legion. Few Remembrancers remained with them, finding the lack of Army personnel leeched common humanity from the fleets, and the Drowned's way of making war offered few opportunities to bear witness. To be sure, not all tasks could be done by servitors, but the Legion’s serfs formed their own insular community, and were almost as unwelcoming as their masters. So only a few persisted in their studies of the XVIth, and we can surmise they proved easy to monitor. It is perhaps for this reason that the Xantriss Insurrection lingers in memory as one of the few recorded battles offering a vague warning of things to come. The actual Insurrection was a relatively straightforward affair. In the last months of 999.M30, Colonel Kiaguz and his regiment, the Megaran 54th Phalanx, had abruptly ended all contact with the Imperium a few weeks after securing Compliance on Xantriss. Kiaguz's favoured rank belied his true power. In truth he was closer to a Lord Marshal, binding his feral-worlder troops to him with a magnetic personality and undeniable military prowess. He had drawn comments for the way in which he eschewed outside elements, taking only a minimal complement of Mechanicum magi to ensure his authority went unchallenged. Yet, as with so many unsavoury but useful individuals, it proved easy to overlook these tendencies considering his tally of conquest. Xantriss was a feral death world, covered in tropical rainforests that was dominated by an inordinate amount of predator species. The human population had been reduced to a primitive state by Old Night and lacked the technology to maintain control of the surface. Therefore, the Xantriss people had endured by burrowing into the soil, creating elaborate underground cities throughout the millennia. It was from these hidden abodes the natives would hunt and retreat, eking out a misery existence until the Imperium's arrival. The Imperials faced the dual challenge of eradicating the Orks and imposing Compliance upon the human population. Colonel Kiaguz, having no desire to engage in a long and bloody campaign, decided that a show of force was in order. Locating the largest settlement on Xantriss, the Megaran 54th deployed en masse, specifically targeting the Orks. Long denied any chance to fight the kind of massive battles they craved except among themselves, the Orks swarmed against the Imperials in numbers large enough to be seen from orbit. Kiaguz exploited this to the hilt, ordering bombardments from orbit before committing almost his entire terrestrial force. Four months of war followed, and Xantriss' people emerged into a world ground beneath the tread of iron beasts and men who killed greenskins with fire and blue starlight. In a grisly but potent piece of symbolism, the carcasses were given to the natives for food and trophies. Awed by the “sky-people's” might and generosity, the humans of Xantriss devoted themselves to the strangers, deifying their leader as Kiaguz completed the conquest. Why would a man who appeared quite rational, cognizant of the might of his overlords, bite the hand that fed him? Sadly, the Galaxy often denies us the reasons, and so we have no idea why Kiaguz traded almost certain elevation for rebellion. From the few records recovered in the aftermath, it is now clear that instead of stopping the natives' ill-placed worship, he embraced it. Kiaguz forsook his duty and claimed Xantriss, claiming the god-kingship the natives bestowed on him. Imperial Retribution The Warmaster would not let this stand, and an example was to be made of the rebels. Ending the Xantriss Insurrection fell to Sorrowsworn Morro and the Drowned. It is widely believed that Morro was chosen because, with Andezo occupied elsewhere and no Legion having ties to the rebels, the task simply fell to the one whose honour would be least besmirched by the deed. Perhaps, however, Alexandros intended it as one more effort to reach out, to make Morro feel valued after the Vizenko Prosecution. Of the battle to come, the void war was the most well-recorded aspect, as the remembrancers encountered few restrictions while they did their work. The gross mismatch testifies to the depth of Kiaguz's delusions: Morro brought two Gloriana-class Battleships with him, leading a flotilla of nearly three hundred vessels. No Army fleet, however large, could expect to survive intact. Moreover, the combined 232nd and 457th Fleets had already proven sufficient to drive Kiaguz's ships back into the world's orbit. By Morro's order they refrained from further action, blockading the system. Upon his arrival, Morro commenced an attack that saw a full third of the enemy ships taken intact. However, this was not without casualties as the Imperials found psykers, taken from the feral population, fighting in Kiaguz's ranks. Plainly more would be found on Xantriss itself. In line with their brutal practicality, the Drowned unleashed a six-hour bombardment of the surface, targeting the largest concentrations of the native population and the few surface bases of the Megaran 54th. Yet, the supposed location of the rogue Colonel, who was based in Xantriss' largest subterranean metropolis, was spared. This in itself was not unusual; the traitors were to be punished, and it was only fitting that they be given time to reflect on the fate they had earned. The Drowned launched a series of vast orbital drops. The remembrancers were prohibited from following, and so the terrestrial war would be seen only by XVIth Legion eyes. Fighting would last two days as the Drowned scoured the tunnel networks of the Megaran 54th and their native allies. Forbidden from the surface, the remembrancers did their best to piece together events from overheard casualty reports, watching for equipment requests, and monitoring additional deployments to Xantriss. The expectation was that the defenders’ familiarity with the terrain would enable them to stall the Legionaries, even inflict significant casualties with their shamanic witchery. Yet soon it became clear that the Drowned were engaging in a war not of subjugation, but of outright annihilation. Morro, directing the initial phase from the Horrorheart, resolved to treat the planet as a Death World, with no concessions to preserving its environment or people. The people of Xantriss had proven themselves in thrall to superstition, and they would not get a second chance. Orbital picts showed the forests blackening and dying, the prefabricated fortifications established in the wastelands created by the bombardments. Bulk lifters brought captives in their thousands to the fleet, the Drowned enslaving all whom they did not kill. Excavation engines, requisitioned by the Legion from nearby worlds, were used to tear open the warrens and bunkers. They pulled the campaign onto their own terms in the most brutal way, destroying the world their enemies had known. The captives were never seen aboard the Legion’s ships except by the Drowned and their serfs, but the fleet’s labs and forge decks, always forbidden to civilians, thrummed with activity. The mortal commanders watched with a growing sense of unease, permitted only to establish what would become penal mining colonies and process captives before the wretches were taken to the Drowned ships. The conduct of the XVIth Legion only made things worse, as they refused to hold meetings aboard their own ships. Disturbing dreams became widespread among personnel, with the Astropaths and Navigators most troubled of all. A day after the shattering conclusion to the campaign and the departure of the main Drowned force, the Army and remembrancers were given leave to see the battlefield themselves. The picts and paintings of the desolation speak eloquently of the devastation. The Drowned did nothing to guide the remembrancers as they dragged the prisoners aboard their lifters and retrieved the last of their war machines. With little apparent oversight, the remembrancers continued their work and would discover more mysteries around the Xantriss Insurrection. The first of them would be found in one of the capillary tunnels, where an imagist discovered the remains of an earlier skirmish. The Drowned's infamous practicality often dictated their combat style; most enemies were dispatched with the bare minimum of force as the Drowned advanced. But here and in seven other locations, native soldiers and members of the 54th were found torn apart, killed in a manner of surpassing cruelty. When questions were asked, the planet's fauna was blamed, the Drowned subsequently forbidding all remembrancers from returning to the sites in question. The explanation, although technically possible, seemed suspect given the Drowned's defensive perimeters and their ravaging of the world. Treading the ground, the remembrancers finally saw the Legion's work for themselves. The surface was unrecognisable, churned by tank tracks and missile strikes. The atmosphere was scalding, climate change running out of control in the wake of the despoliation. Several regions were inaccessible to mortals, owing to the chemical and rad-weapons wielded by The Drowned. Even where these weapons had not been deployed, an atmosphere of dread permeated, with nightmares and hallucinations affecting those mortals who ventured to the battlefields. So it was at Kurium, where the renegade Colonel had been dug out of his fortress by sheer brute force. Only a few braved the pall of misery that hung over the ruin, but this was enough for the final mystery to emerge. A historian named Jakun Iopado discovered a strange vial in the tunnels of Kiaguz's final redoubt. It lay broken and half-buried in the cave wall, but some dregs of liquid still remained. Unwilling to share his discovery with the Drowned, Iopado concealed the vial and only had it analyzed after transferring to the Dune Serpents a few months later. Upon the transfer, he handed it over to an Apothecary for analysis. Given the state of the vial, nothing certain could be deduced, but the Apothecary hypothesised that it was some sort of narcotic, designed to influence an Astartes. As for the Colonel himself, Kiaguz was seen briefly in the aftermath, kept on the surface to watch as his devotees were enslaved. The man showed every sign of being broken, gibbering of the horrors he had seen. He was never seen again by civilian eyes, but Morro let his ultimate fate be known; he kept Kiaguz caged as a source of amusement until his mind deteriorated completely, whereupon he became an armoury servitor. Category:X Category:Imperial Campaigns Category:Great Crusade Category:The Drowned